Extraversion
The tendency to seek social contact, stimulation, assertiveness and reward, and to feel positive emotion often and strongly. Low scorers (introverts) are reserved, prefer less stimulation and depend less on social reward.
What drives it
Reflects sensitivity to reward: how much energy, pleasure and drive a person gets from people, status and excitement. Useful for identification because it predicts who seeks leadership and visibility, and because it is often mistaken for confidence or competence.
How it shows
Work
High: talks to think, speaks first in meetings, energised by networking, seeks visible roles, can dominate airtime and decide too fast. Low: thinks before speaking, contributes more in writing or one to one, drained by back-to-back meetings, often underestimated. Extraversion predicts emergence as a leader and success in sales more than it predicts leader effectiveness.
Relationships
High: wants a full social calendar, processes problems aloud, reads a quiet partner as withdrawn or angry. Low: wants a few deep friendships and time alone after social effort, reads the extravert's need for company as restlessness.
Self
After a long dinner with six people, are you energised or depleted? Do you reach for company or quiet when you want to feel better? Introversion is not shyness: you can be socially skilled and still need recovery time.
What tells it apart
Social anxiety: An introvert prefers less contact but does not fear it; the socially anxious person wants contact and avoids it out of fear of judgement, and shows anticipatory dread and post-event rumination.
Introversion and extraversion (Jung's original sense): Jung's introversion is about the direction of psychic energy (inner world versus outer object); the Big Five trait is about reward sensitivity and sociability. Someone can be Jung-introverted and still score moderately on trait extraversion.
Grandiose narcissism: Both are bold and visible; the extravert enjoys people for their own sake, while the grandiose narcissist needs them as an audience and loses interest when not admired.
A test
Watch what the person does to recover from a hard week: seek people and noise, or seek solitude.
Questions to carry
- After a hard week, where does the person go to recover, toward people or toward solitude?
- Which people leave me fuller after time with them, and which leave me drained?
How strong the research is
strong
Where it comes from
Carl Jung, 1921 (as attitude type); Hans Eysenck, 1947 (as a measured trait); Costa and McCrae, 1985
On the family tree: Hans Eysenck
Sources
- Daniel Nettle, Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are (2007)